Dragon's life in college

Ch 44

A couple hours in, they were surprised by Oceania and Turtle surfacing out of the lake. Although they had known they would arrive today, the exact time hadn’t been known. Anyway, that resulted in a happy, and slightly damp, reunion between the friends. Since Oceania and Turtle had already unpacked everything, they were free to spend the rest of the day hanging out together. Fortunately, neither Oceania or Ryu pulled out their notes on Nigel’s Incineration class, leaving that unpleasant thought pushed into the indefinite future.

Turtle, for once, wasn’t signed up for any classes likely result in serious and/or permanent damage to himself or others. “How much trouble can he get into claw-painting?” Oceania had asked when Nigel and Ryu had asked her about that. “If he’s anything like Comet, the worst that happens is that he ends up with multi-colored claws for the rest of the semester and everything is covered in claw-prints,” Nigel answered. “That’s still a large improvement over last semester,” Oceania said. “Why is he taking claw-painting? Isn’t that a dragonet craft?” Ryu asked. “I don’t know. I don’t ask questions. I just make certain to pack any medical equipment necessary.”

Nigel shrugged, he understood the mentality. Not the needing medical equipment, but not asking questions at a younger sibling’s, or in this case cousin’s, art habits. Trust him, he had had a lot of experience. Still, it didn’t explain why a college was offering a dragonet busy craft as an entire class, but that was also something Nigel had learned not to question.

Oceania and Ryu compared this class schedules, seeing which classes had any similarities. Considering the names, there would be some interesting upcoming debates as to the purpose of humans in a dragon kingdom. Oceania had before advocated for leaving the humans alone except for Scarefest and their treasure.

“Which is technically our treasure, they just keep stealing it back,” Ryu argued.

“We don’t pull gold, silver, and gems out of the ground, do we?” Oceania had countered. A point Ryu had to acknowledge. While a few dragons did mine their own treasure, most considered it too much work and preferred stealing it from humans. The largest mines were all property of the royal families, who thought it wise to have a consistent source of income not connected to two legged money finders.

Ryu, on the other hand, thought humans a wonderful source of treasure, entertainment, and occasionally food. Although even he thought that excessive feasting on them wasn’t something to be done often, although that had more to do with the general lack of good-tasting meat humans provided.

Nigel had almost thrown out when Ryu had briefly described the taste and texture of humans, “too skinny and oily,” was all he had heard before he had taken to the air. He had gotten a brief glimpse of Oceania whacking Ryu over the head before she had joined him. After that, Ryu had never mentioned what eating humans tasted like, both because he didn’t want to torment his friend that much but also because he didn’t want to be dunked in the lake like both Oceania and Turtle had threatened to do.

Other than the debate whether or not humans should be eaten, or if they were even good eating, listening to Oceania and Ryu disagree on aspects of ruling was quite interesting. And if one somehow got too bored of listening to them, there was always Turtle’s tales of what happened during art classes. Nigel was convinced Turtle wasn’t the only art student dying from all of the assignments.

“At least the teachers will have a good warm-up round before Comet and Dragonfly come to college,” Nigel had mentioned once. Turtle had rolled around giggling for about twenty minutes after that, almost dying from the thought of his teachers having to deal with Nigel’s younger siblings.

“There are worse things in life than having to deal with a few hyperactive, overimaginative young dragons,” Ryu had pointed out, although he had also broken down laughing at the idea.

“Maybe they’ll mature a little,” Oceania had offered, trying to make life a little easier for future teachers.

“Maybe,” Nigel had replied. He didn’t quite see his younger siblings ever fully outgrowing their quirky, playful attitudes, but maybe they would at least learn to reign it in a little bit.

(Insert from future Nigel, What in the world was I thinking. Nigel wasn’t, future Ember commented cheekily. Thank you for that unhelpful comment, Ember. But it’s true. Go court your girlfriend and let me get back to calculating the end of the world.)